Rating: 
Summary: If I didnt like it, I wouldn't spend this much time writing.
Review: Having played Age of Empires, Warcraft, and C&C titles for many years now I have learned what to expect from each series. Play Age of Empires or Mythology for all day strategy sessions, War/Star craft to become immersed in a good fantasy story, and Command and Conquer for a fast paced bang-bang shoot em up. Generals, as the latest in the Command and Conquer series, is right on course with the other C&C titles in this categorization.As if to acknowledge that the storyline was always pretty bad in the previous C&C titles, Generals seems to give up on it altogether. There are no more video interludes, nor attempts to formulate a cohesive plot. Instead the campaign missions are merely a series of scenarios of increasing difficulty punctuated by meaningless debriefings and in game animations. While the debriefing may change slightly from mission to mission (capture this building, blow up this one) all scenarios come down to destroying the enemy base. Dont buy this game expecting a good story. Generals also gave up on walls. That's right, no more useless walls to decorate your base. Generals acknowledges that the name of the game is offense, it's Command and Conquer not Cower and Defend. Base defenses are simplified while more thought has been put into functioanlity and development of offensive units. Opportunities for creative ground and, to a lesser extent, air strategies abound. Generals has also eliminated the Navy, this takes away one strategic dimension, but also gives the game a little more realism. The pace, as always, is frantic. You'll still be disappointed to find that while you were ensuring victory in one battle, the one you weren't watching cost you heavily. Units seem particularly bad at responding to attack unless put in guard mode, however, they dont chase planes back to the enemy base (and their doom) anymore either. Buy this game if you like speed checkers more than chess. Gameplay is pretty good in Generals, not as many thoughful features as showing units health in groups, and longer queues at structures (you can only queue up to 9 units), but the gameplay is fairly streamlined and easy to pick up. Not much micro-management either aside from rebuilding the base after the latest superweapon disasters and finding more supplies occassionally. Each side now also has alternative money making schemes, so you're not necessarily in the poor house when the stockpiles deplete. The AI seems better than previous versions in the campaigns, but worse in skirmishes. You'll get the most out of this game playing against people with capacity for abstract thought...although they might be harder to find. Generals really shines in its effort to reign in the more recent C&C titles back to reality. You can still do a lot of the same things (take over enemy vehicles & buildings) but they are done in more realistic ways (Hijackers instead of mind control). The graphics and attention to detail are outstanding. Sure the infantry look a little robotic, but you can zoom in and around them as they clutch their bloody wounds; did I mention this game might be a little graphic for kids? Buy this game if you're into Hum-Vees more than women riding griffons shooting arrows. Many reviews will make you fret about your system, and certainly different hardware combinations may cause problems, but if it eases your mind any the game works fine on my 2 yr old, 1.2 ghz, standard guts, windows ME chugger. Just make sure to tone down the graphics (dont fear the custom button), shut down your background programs (especially anti-virus), and turn off the music (you wont be missing much there) or some combination of these if you're having problems. I would not recommend this game if you have serious doubts as to whether your system can handle it or are uncomfortable changing some settings. One final thought, if you are buying this game for your or someone elses child, consider that this is a realistic war game confronting contemporary issues such as suicide bombers, chemical weapons, and in one scenario even attacking civilians.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Title
Review: I think this is a great game. Yes, back in 1992, we had the same bug issues that we have now, but hey, the Single Player is about the best game I have ever played. And a great inclusion to this game is the Ranking system which allows you to get upgrades by being promoted. I don't know if this was included in any other C&C game, but I know that it is an outstanding idea. With the added up graphics, incredible Single Player, and the so-so Multiplayer, this is my favorite RTS game of the year so far! :)
Rating:
Summary: Great Game
Review: If you liked Tiberian Sun this one is just as good. The video intros are not as cheasy as others have said. They are funny and just like a DVD clip with real actors. Still they are a bit silly. This does not alter the fact that the game is another very great C&C game. My favorite part is how the units gain rank and really become better (once they hit the elite status they can regain health!). Some similarities with other C&C but plenty of differences.
Rating: 
Summary: As Much Fun as You Put Into It
Review: This really isn't a game, it's a toolset. If you can convince your office mates to play with you it can be fun (although it quickly devolves into the same rush or defense tactic, every time). But it's only as fun as your opponents make it. Playing the AI is a waste of time. All it does is rush. And the difficulty levels only control how rampantly the game cheats. If you defend against a rush (which isn't difficult to do, the AI has one attack pattern on each map) the computer will keep sending troops, single file, to meet your wall of death. It is frustrating because there is no challenge. Particularly when the only reason the computer beats you is because it is cheating - the computer obviously multitasks, performing numerous complicated manuevers at the same time. So if you're engaged in a battle the computer will be constructing buildings, sending troops to other areas, and intricately micro-managing the troops in the battle at the same time. I'm talking down to the point of running over your infantry with its tanks. I've also had situations where I control all sources of income on a map, yet the computer keeps building and building. Hmm. The only challenge is learning the computer's build path and rush tactics, and once you're past those it's a pushover. Since it took me all of three hours to learn all of its tactics, on all difficulty levels (I can beat it on any map with little effort), I just don't feel I got my money's worth. Worse, it does nothing to train you for online gaming, which is where the future of this title lies. My comments mainly address the skirmish mode because the campaign is just dumb. You are given these ridiculous objectives and waypoints, which aren't fun and are frequently too confusing. The attempt to place the game in a real-life scenario was pretty poor thinking. Yeah it's realistic to be able to garrison troops in a civilian building, but in real life I could call down numerous air strikes to level the building. In this game you get one per 4 minutes, and that's only after a General's promotion. The online element fails for a much different reason. Basically, online players exploit weaknesses in the game's balance. The game would have been excellent if it had stayed with a realistic depiction of military capability. But instead there is the strange addition of invisible, invincible soldiers. The GLA have two of this type. This ruined my enjoyment of the game. It is simply frustrating to set up a perfect defense - all paths to your base covered by machine guns and rockets - and then to have your opponent sneak an invisible soldier into your base, capture your town center, and start cranking out turrets. Sure it's funny, sure it's a way to win. But it's just not fun. It's a lot like the wall cheat in the old C&C games. It would make some sense if there were any way to defeat these soldiers. But on top of being invisible when they don't move, they are also invincible when invisible. So if you see one, and go to where he is, and he stops moving, you can run over the entire area with tanks, flame broil it, strafe it with machine guns - and you won't hit the invisible soldier. This is a drastic departure from previous C&C games, where the soldier would still be vulnerable even if invisible. Why is this so aggravating? Because they capture buildings in a heartbeat. So if you don't have a gun in the immediate area, by the time you get one there your building is captured. And then the guy just goes invisible again, and the cycle repeats. It's just silly, and it has no place in a war game. The game is pretty - particularly the explosions - but it won't run well on its minimum spec machine (put it on an 800 and you're looking at around 10 fps). So that limits me to playing at the office. With a firewall keeping me from reaching the Internet and few opportunities to play on the LAN, it's just gathering dust. If you're going to buy it, buy it used. Definitely not worth full price.
Rating: 
Summary: TOO MANY ISSUES, TOO LITTLE SUPPORT
Review: I bought this game, it worked for a week. I began receiving fatal error messages. Attempted to contact customer support, no glory. Checked on EA's website, all they offer is a forum where techs post replies to problems. They told me that my chipset is not supported. The box does not list my chipset as not being supported. The game scanned my PC and said it met all system requirements. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: A Loyal Customer and Avid Fan of the C&C Series
Review: I have waited for this game for months and when it finally arrived it was in my PC not three days after being released. Besides to number of items you must have to make the game run smoothly like the correct chipset, the game locks up my PC every time I play it. I have followed the instructions, made sure I have the correct software and hardware but nothing makes it stop locking up. I have a brand new 200 machine, 7500 video card and sound care well past the minimum requirements. The game is very enjoyable but HIGHLY unstable. Be ready for a few hours of aggrevation.
Rating:
Summary: Serious bugs
Review: The good : Game has decent graphics, not as stunning as Age of Mythology, but in line with Warcraft III. The bad : The game interface is still much the same as C&C's of past. Left click everthing. Right click twice to release unit/group. Very annoying. The ugly : First installed on my "high-end" gaming machine: Win XP Pro on an Athlon XP 1800+, 512M DDR RAM, with an Asus GeForce4 TI 4200 w/ 128M. After playing through training mission and 2 missions in the first campaign, system started locking up (not just the game, it took the whole system down). Latest patch from game co and updated drivers from nVidia, still no luck. Runs then crashes. Then, uninstalled from that machine and put on my sons PC: Win XP Pro on an Athlon XP 1800+, 512M DDR RAM, with an ATI Radeon 8500 w/ 64M RAM. Game at least runs, however, the response is extremely slow, video is choppy, and the cursor is extremely erratic (does not paint well). Conclusion : Although the game appears to be fun, there are way too many bugs and annoyances to warrant anything other than 1 star.
Rating:
Summary: Great game, but not perfect
Review: Pros:
-Lots of variety between the 3 factions.
-Versatile units perform many different tasks.
-Different strategies are required for different situations. This is one of the few RTS games where you actually have to strategize to do well.
-Good graphics (except for the water, which is terrible)
-Units, abilities, and super weapons are tons of fun to use. Cons:
-Requires lots of juice to run. Don't even think of buying this game unless you have at least a Pentium 4 (or equivalent processor) and at least 256 MB of RAM.
-There's no real story to the campaigns. It's certainly realistic for you to only be doing military operations but it would be nice to have more of a story.
-Computer AI is not all that intuitive or crafty.
-Map editor is clunky and harder to use than the average RTS map editor.
Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary, Epic, the best RTS of all time
Review: Most reviews for this game are not giving it the credit it deserves. People are complaining that there computers cant handle it. Would you prefere if they made the graphics a little worse and the amount of units more limited? Of course not. The reason the A.I. doesn't seem as effective as it did in past games is because the this game is so much more complex. I think that if fighting a brutal army is to easy for you, why not fight 2 or 3. If you think you're such a hotshot that the A.I. can't challenge you, try and take on 7 brutals. Of course that would be impossible but the point is that you can still challenge yourself with this games brytal armies. This doesn't matter that much anyway because the only time you'll be playing the computer is when your friends aren't on. That won't be often judging by how much fun multiplayer games are.
On a final note, I'd like to take this time to tell anyone who already has this game, or is purchasing it, to turn off any virus programs they have while they are playing online. Otherwise they may be seeing the, "You or another player may have a firewall blocking the connection so you can't play" message quite often. Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: Great game but could use some fine tunning
Review: This is a great Command and Conquer game but it is not the best. Generals has the best graphics out of all the other C&C games but that only accounts for part of the game. Here are some of the factors that make the game bad or could be tuned up. -There are not that many units fore each nation around 12 units each.
-Although the tanks, terrain and buildings look good. The human soldiers look horrible they look like cartoon figures, and civil was soldiers.
-There are only 7 missions for each nation.
-Some of the missions are repetitive or boring.
- Requires a state of the art computer to run.
-In one mission you have to shoot down American supply plans bringing food to the civilians, you also can use anthrax weapons (How terrible, what was EA thinking)
Here are some of the factors witch make C&C generals a good game.
-There are three sides to choose from China, GLA, and America
-Very cool units like a dragon tank, stealth bomber, snipers, nuke cannon, Migs, and scud launcher.
-Very good graphics besides the soldiers.
-Multiplayer is a blast
-You get to destroy dams and watch as a flood of water comes crashing down on your enemies.
-An upgrade system that allows you to train a new unit or gain a unique ability.
- Cool zoom in feature which allows you to see the battle up close and personal. In the end C&C generals is a good game but it could be better. EA should have waited a few more months so they could fix some of the problems.
| 
